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The evergreen, ever-bronze and always suave star, who over his decades-long career has gone from clowning in movie hits including “Love at First Bite” and “Zorro, the Gay Blade” to celeb-centric reality competitions like “Dancing With the Stars” and the UK version of “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,” tells PopcornBiz he’s ready to find a steady acting role on the small screen.

“I want to do a television series, but I don't want to be the lead in it,” says Hamilton, 71. “I want to be the father of the lead – I think it's about time.”

And, as befits his leisure-loving image, he doesn’t want to work too hard: just walking into a scene, delivering a snappy line of dialogue and then back to the Star Waggon. That way, he says, “it's not the ratings that you're worried about. That's their problem. I've learned that: Let the lead guy carry it!”

Hamilton, who’s spent the last several decades primarily playing himself in the form of a gracefully aging Hollywood bon vivant, admits he is itching to remind people that he can indeed act – in part to stave off his own aging process.

“You have to reinvent yourself every few years and if you get stuck in any sort of thing you think, 'This is it,’” says Hamilton. “And what happens is that you start to become part of the past, and you age. I also want to go back to Broadway. I did 'Chicago,' and there's a particular play that I'm interested in. I'll know in February if I go to Broadway.”

The actor also has plans to return to writing after sunlamp-glowing reviews of his witty, living-large 2008 memoir Don’t Mind If I Do. He promises a sequel that will continue his life story “through my current age of 35.”